Robert Lewis Stevenson's Nightmare Gothic novella from the late Victorian era,

the strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, speaks right to the heart of our deepest human concern,

which is best expressed by the story's tortured man of science

when he says man is not truly one, but truly two. And many will look back across the vast

wasteland of history and wonder how the bloodiest atrocities and darkest crimes could have taken place.

How can one's neighbours who are civilized and good on the surface one day

turn to hateful and evil murderers the next?

How can one's friends become fiends? This is the terror at the dark centre of Stevenson's story.

And alongside Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Bram Stoker's Dracula, this furious shot out of hell

continues to disturb readers well beyond its time of publication and has secured itself

as one of the three most influential tales of terror ever composed.

So, thank goodness Robert Louis Stevenson did not abide by his wife's decision to destroy the story. During a six-day-and-night writing stint,

fueled by a frenzied cocaine binge and feeling delirious from tuberculosis, the Scottish writer

now frequently best-loved for his enduring children's narratives like Treasure Island and kidnapped,

furiously committed the tale of Jekyll and Hyde to manuscript.

Stevenson was still haunted by horrific real-life events that took place in Edinburgh

several years prior when his friend, Eugene

Chantrell, was convicted of murdering his wife with opium after taking out a large life

insurance policy on her right before her death. After his hanging, many believed he poisoned or pushed several others to overdose too.

Feeling Jekyll and Hyde to be his best work yet, Stevenson presented the story to his wife,

who found it to be nothing but fiendish ravings, a choir full of utter nonsense. And she thought

this to be the kind of story one might find in the shilling shockers and penny dreadfuls of the

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